The Deserts of the Globe.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 419, 19 October 1889, Page 6

The Deserts of the Globe.

There are eight great barren spots, or desents, on the face of our planet, besides innumerable smaller ones. The largestdesert is the Sahara, the greatest length of which is 3,.100 miles, by a greatest breadth of 600 miles. Summer is ' its only season, its days being scorching, its nights cold. The desert of Gobi, the Asiatic Sahara, is more than 1,800 miles long by 500 miles wide. It is a plateau 5,000 feet high, with only five trees in a distance of 500 miles. The temperature often falls to 30deg. or 40deg. below zero. The interior of Australia rivals these two great deserts, and is terrible to travellers on account of its heat and the lack of water. The Arabian desert is a sandy wa^te of about 50,000 square miles, dotted here and there wibh a few staunted bushes or dwarfed palms. A large part of Persia i 3 a desert tract, in ivhich vegetation is so rare that one may travel 300 miles and see only one tree. In South America the Puna extends for 350 Spanish miles in length at an elevation of 12,000 feet. Another desert of Peru — now partially subdued by man and crossed by a railway— stretches 1,200 miles along the Pacific, from eight to fifty miles wide. The great American desert of the United States is a region of many hundreds of square miles of rock, sand and alkali, with a scanty growth of sage brush and a little animal life.

A Kansas exchange says thab sorghum roots will go sixteen feet for water. That is a good deal more than some men will do. Bobby— Ma, I've nearly outgrown my slippers, haven't I? Mamma — Yes Bobby. Bobby — And, say, ma, how long wi it be before I outgrow your slipper* ?